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Washington, D.C.—The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is urging lawmakers to reject two harmful provisions in a Senate-passed highway extension bill that the House may consider in the near future.

Section 52106 of H.R. 22—the Senate-passed highway bill—would revive the failed experiment to outsource tax collection to private collection agencies (PCAs). Section 52202 calls for diverting increases in Customs user fees to unrelated transportation projects.

In a recent letter, NTEU National President Tony Reardon reminded House members that the PCA experiment has been tried and rejected twice in the past 20 years and that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is best suited for that job. NTEU has strongly advocated for increased IRS funding.

“In addition to being fiscally unsound, allowing PCAs to collect tax debt on a commission basis led to taxpayer abuse,” Reardon wrote. “NTEU is not alone in its opposition to outsourcing the collection of taxes. Opposition to allowing private companies to collect taxes on a commission basis has been voiced by the Administration, the National Taxpayer Advocate and a coalition of civil and consumer rights groups, including the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza.”

Reardon wrote that diverting $4 billion in Customs user fees away from the intended purpose of increasing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staffing would hurt the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to facilitate international trade and travel. Section 52202 calls for indexing Customs user fees to inflation and using the revenue for transportation programs.

The user fees have paid for nearly one-third of the CBP Officer workforce—more than 7,000 personnel, the NTEU leader wrote.

“Sufficient CBP staffing must be provided to ensure security and mitigate long wait times at our nation’s air, sea and land ports of entry. There is perhaps no greater roadblock to legitimate trade and travel efficiency than the shortage of staff at the ports. Understaffed ports lead to long delays for the traveling public and in commercial lanes as cargo waits to enter U.S. commerce. Those delays result in real losses to the U.S. economy,” according to President Reardon.

NTEU’s concerns were echoed in a letter sent recently by 15 members of the Homeland Security Committee and Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee to the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Opposition to the user-fee proposal is growing outside Capitol Hill as well. A coalition of travel, tourism, airport and airline organizations wrote to the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this month urging that the user fee diversion be rejected. In the letter, they said airline passengers “should not be used as a piggy bank” for highway projects.

NTEU, the nation’s largest independent federal-employee union, represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.